1. Field of Art
The disclosure generally relates to the field of operating systems in mobile computing devices.
2. Description of Art
Mobile computing systems with telephonic functionality, e.g., smartphones, are rapidly growing in popularity. The install base of such systems is about to, or already did, exceed the install based of personal computers. However, devices such as smartphones have limitations that continue to make personal computers a platform of choice. For example, smartphones typically lack drivers to interoperate with popular peripherals such as external keyboards, pointing devices (e.g., mouse or trackpad), printers and scanners. To address this deficiency some smartphones are configured to interoperate with specially configured peripherals that leverage a BLUETOOTH protocol. However, these solutions may require specialized drivers particular to the smartphone and/or specialized peripherals having BLUETOOTH capabilities. Other attempts to address these deficiencies require a special application, for example, a print application that “prints” to a network cloud. The network cloud is configured to operate with a specific printer. Each of these solutions is cumbersome and may require a high level of customization that makes them very inefficient.
Further, smartphones are not structured to support and execute complex personal computer software, for example, ADOBE PHOTOSHOP or AUTOCAD. To address this deficiency, some solutions provide a “run-time” version that is used merely to open and view files created on the full personal computer software. Other attempts to address this deficiency have focused on development of a highly “slimmed down” or “lite” version of these applications. These versions, of course, lack the full functionality of the full personal computer software.
Still other shortcomings of smartphones relative to the personal computer exist such as display form factor and power draw. Moreover, even relatively simple interactions between the smartphone and personal computer are not without problems, often required installation of special software and synchronization for data management.